Stuck Pigs (and Presstitutes) Squeal

As an economist, I have never had much patience with Paul Krugman’s economics, stuck as he is in 1940s-era Keynesian demand-side economics. I have sometimes concluded that Krugman had rather denounce Ronald Reagan than to acknowledge that supply-side economists have established that fiscal policy has supply-side, not just demand-side, effects.

However, Krugman does display at times a moral conscience. He did so on September 11 in his New York Times column, “The Years of Shame.” Krugman wrote that 9/11 was hijacked by “fake heroes” who used the event “to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight” and that “our professional pundits” lent their support to the misuse of the event.

The stuck pigs, of course, squealed loudly. The war criminal, Donald Rumsfeld, publicly cancelled his New York Times subscription, and the complicit presstitutes in Washington’s wars of aggression jumped on Krugman with spikes and hatchets.

Perhaps Krugman meant to use the plural and say “unrelated wars.” The US government has made war on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, resulting in massive destruction of homes, infrastructure, and lives of civilians, all in the name of one lie or the other. In addition, the US government is conducting military operations against the populations of three more Muslim countries—Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, with extensive loss of civilian life in Pakistan, a US ally. Drones are sent in week after week that blow up schools, medical centers, and farm communities, and each time Washington announces that they have killed “militants,” “al Qaeda,” “Taliban leaders.”

Thanks to what Krugman calls “our professional pundits” and Gerald Celente calls “presstitutes,” the American people know little if anything about the murder of countless civilians and displacement of millions of others in these six Muslim countries, which the Bush/Obama governments regard as “security threats,” or habitats of small elements that are “security threats,” to the single super-power.

Before I continue, think for a minute about the level of threat posed by these Muslim countries that lack internal unity, an air force, a navy, a modern army, and nuclear ICBMs. Compare this “threat” to the Soviet threat, which, at least, was potentially real.

The Soviets had the Red Army, which had defeated Hitler and his high class war machine. The Soviet Union had an amazing array of extremely powerful ICBMs with single and multiple nuclear warheads, and nuclear submarines outfitted with nuclear-armed missiles.

Somehow we survived 46 years of this threat without going to war. But Iraq, which all but the most stupid people on earth now know had no “weapons of mass destruction” was such a threat that the US government felt not only compelled to invade but also justified to lie to the United Nations in order to attack and destroy a country that had done nothing whatsoever to us and posed no threat whatsoever.

The same for Afghanistan. The Taliban posed no threat whatsoever to the United States or its European allies.

Pakistan is a US ally, yet Washington has murdered thousands of Pakistani civilians. The liars in Washington and the presstitute media always claim that murdered civilians are “al Qaeda terrorists.” Every time Washington blows up a hospital, a farmer’s home, a school, Washington issues a report that it has just killed some al Qaeda leader. Some of these leaders have been reported killed multiple times.

I’m not surprised that this does not sit well with Paul Krugman. The best thing in the Keynesians’ resume is not their economics—although it was better, perhaps, than the economics that could not explain the Great Depression—but their moral conscience. Keynesian economists, for the most part, cared about people and what happened to them. I knew many of the Keynesians and debated before university and professional audiences a handful of Keynesian Nobel prize-winners. I never thought that they were callous people. I never expected to miss them.

To return to Krugman: His message comes across most powerfully in the presstitute pundits’ response to him. Michelle Malkin, whose book on immigration I once, regrettably, reviewed favorably, misinterpreted Krugman’s courage as cowardice and called him a “smug coward.”

After establishing Krugman to be a “coward,” the presstitutes, who delight in murdering “towel-heads” in six countries, escalated their attack on Krugman. Peter Bella declared Krugman to be “vile” and to have “no conscience.”

Bella’s interpretation of a moral conscience as its antithesis is a typical presstitute response. It led to attacks on the New York Times for having a “cowardly,” “bewildering,” “arrogant,” “vile,” contributor who “has no conscience” as a columnist.

Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post declared the New York Times for publishing Krugman’s column to be “a spiritual wasteland,” this from a “newspaper” that many regard as a CIA asset.

In other words. Shut Krugman up. Cancel his column. We don’t want to hear anything from anyone that casts doubt on Washington’s murder, maiming, and dislocation of millions of people because of a “threat” that is a total lie. We are the exceptional nation. We are the light unto the world. Ordinary laws do not apply to us because we are exceptional. Laws are for underlings. We have “freedom and democracy.” Anyone who doubts us is evil and a terrorist and a pinko-liberal-commie.

It will be interesting to see if Krugman’s column survives his statement of truth. It will tell us whether America has succumbed totally to being the land of the liars, or whether a person of moral conscience still has a voice.

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About the Author

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts attended four of the finest universities, studied under two Nobel Prize-winners in economics, authored 20 peer-reviewed articles in journals of scholarship, and published four academic press peer-reviewed books, including Harvard and Oxford Universities, and seven commercially published books. His most recent book is The Neoconservative Threat to World Order: Washington's Perilous War for Hegemony.

Books by Paul Craig Roberts

The civilian to combatant casualty ratio of 3:1 is pretty standard, especially in urban combat. The decision to go the war in Iraq was stupid, but nothing in the wikileaks statistics indicated exceptional killing of civilians. The only country that gets lower than 3:1 in land war is Israel which gets 1:1 because they are leet like that.

Tremendous. It is quite refreshing to read an article that doesn’t demonize someone who doesn’t agree with the author. Not being an economist, I can’t say for sure what economic voodoo makes the economy move forward. Reagan had growth, but statistics sure suggest that the growth was not as well distributed as the post-war growth (of course there wer other historical factors there as well). I suppose that is consistent with your point about the inherent, and I would argue necessary, morality of particular schools of economics. Thanks.

David Phillips

If only those with opposing views in Washington could look for their common truths for the collective good, instead of jockeying for sound bites and punditry points!

Admirable comments. Which reflect well on the author of them as well as on Dr. Krugman, and his moral conscience. Too bad we don’t have more across the aisles civility and decency these days. This commentary also highlights what is spoken of only barely in most 9/11 and War on Terrorism media reporting – the huge loss of life resulting from these wars, the injuries, dislocations of refugees. We are stuck in a cycle of endless war perhaps because there has not been enough sensitizing reporting about the tragedies other people in other countries have endured directly related to the USA’s 9/11 response. I wish to God things had been different for everyone. The innocents who died on 9/11 and the civilians in other countries.

dan

PCR, thanks for another great article.

And thanks for continuing to write the truth and shoot straight.

I hope we can heed your call without having to hit absolute rock bottom first.

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